A Wise Lover
by Little Obsessions
Summary: "So the next morning, when you commed me to the holodeck, I wasn't expecting the gift you gave me. I wasn't expecting the doors to slide open and to be standing in a sitting room bedecked with old-fashioned decorations, a blazing fire that beat back the chill from the photonic snow dropping outside. Not Indiana, but an anamnesis of Indiana..." A gift for Mia Cooper.


**Author's Note:**

This story has not been beta'd because it's a gift FOR my beta and no one wants to get a gift before it's ready. So any mistakes I happily lay claim to and apologise for. And of course there will be, because that's why Mia's so awesome; she fixes my multitudinous mistakes and that is why I humbly submit this gift.

Also, I apologise for the candy-cane sugariness of this. Christmas tends to make me a little nicer. Thank the lord it only lasts a day.

Kudos, criticism and comments are welcome and appreciated.

 **Disclaimer:** These characters don't belong to me, and nor does any reference or allusion to plots or idea that are recognisably Paramount's or CBS'. I make no gain – monetary or otherwise - from writing these stories.

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 **"A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver." - Thomas a Kempis**

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The first time I told you about it, you laughed. Not in a cruel way – you understand traditions, you embrace them more than I ever did – but in a way which spoke of your delight in such absurdity.

I had to agree, it was absurd.

I was struggling that day, trailing behind the stars we were diving through, wishing for a destination and a meal and an embrace that was light-years away. Our fourth year, Kes' leaving, the Borg, had taken their pound of flesh from me, even worse form us, and sometimes I still couldn't look you in the eye.

Sometimes, when I feel exposed and raw and cut apart by the stinging realisation of the things I have done – though you tell me I did nothing wrong – I still can't.

It was the things I didn't expect to hurt which became blistering agonies when we were out there. Missing my mother's Christmas –a tradition which few humans celebrated as they once had done, the meaning attributed to it centuries before lost to logic and humanity, but that my mother's traditional proclivities had preserved – was an entirely new grief to me. I used to hate it, trawling to Indiana in the depth of winter and suffering through each carefully maintained tradition.

As soon as I couldn't have it, I felt bereft.

You laughed, and your laugh released me from my own embarrassment.

"Your mother makes you what?" You asked, grinning over the rim of your tea.

I had indulged in a nostalgic hot chocolate, and I took a sip. The repilcator wasn't human enough to understand what I needed; not just a drink, but the smell of rich food and the sensation and the warmth of a fire and the strange, mesmerizing shadows cast by the tree.

But you were.

Even so, the next morning, when you commed me to the holodeck, I wasn't expecting the gift you gave me. I wasn't expecting the doors to slide open and to be standing in a sitting room bedecked with old-fashioned decorations, a blazing fire that beat back the chill from the photonic snow dropping outside. Not Indiana, but an anamnesis of Indiana, and of a life I once knew.

You shrugged in your massive jumper, as if embarrassed.

"I don't know what your mother's house looks like."

It didn't matter, and I was too overwhelmed to speak.

The fact we had an hour until we were due on the Bridge didn't matter either. We sat in front of the fire, and you were quiet – murmured gentle words of comfort – as I cried.

And you never said a thing, apart from that you were sorry you didn't have a gift.

It's funny that you didn't know then, in a bleak way, and that you still don't know what it is to give a gift to me.

It probably says a lot more about me, and how we became so lost, that you didn't know what you did for me that day.

I wonder now, as I watch you, if you know now what a gift it was.

I might ask you today. If I get the courage.

When I finally open my eyes from my musings, you are staring at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. Your hands are clasped on top of the cotton covers, and you don't notice I am awake at first.

It is only when I trail my finger over the curve of your tattoo that you acknowledged it.

"Good morning," I say softly.

"Merry Christmas," you say, and it is strange on your tongue.

We lock eyes for a moment, and if you don't know what I am thinking then I would be surprised. You touch my cheek to soften the fear, the regret, and the panic about the things I denied myself for so long.

"A year," you murmur, and you mean a year at home and almost a year for us.

Us. A year.

It is on the top of my tongue to say it should be longer, I should have given up my control for you, but that's not the gift you want.

And there are some gifts you want that I can never give you. I don't know how to apologise for that, so I don't.

And the beautiful thing is, you don't mind my silence.

Sometimes it's my noise which hurts you.

"I love you," I say, and before you can answer, my mother's voice is soft at the door.

"Santa Clause has been," she sing-songs from behind the wood.

I bury my face in your chest, and laugh at the memory of that night in my quarters and your incredulity when I told you.

"So you must sing now?" You ask it as if you don't know.

"Only if Phoebe will," I mutter - sadness, joy and humiliation vying for dominance in my voice.

Just as I say that, the slightly-flat chorus of my niece, my nephew, my sister, and her husband starts ricocheting around the hall outside and battering against my bedroom door.

It's an ancient carol, and you don't know it.

But you try anyway.

What I did to deserve such joy, someone so willing to forgive me my faults and my cruelty and my weakness, escapes me then.

And I'm overwhelmed with the kind of romance that makes me feel raw and frightened of what you do to me.

"You're the greatest gift I've ever had," I tell you over your attempt to join in.

You fall quiet and grin a big, delicious, satisfied grin.

It used to make me angry, but now it makes my blood calm and my mind rest. Now it makes me leave the office at a reasonable hour, slip off the commbadge and the rank, and settle in your arms.

"And you're mine Kathryn."

You don't understand that I'm not a gift, that I'm a chore and an exercise in patience. That I'm the farthest thing from easy. You don't understand that the giver in this relationship – and it has been from that moment I stepped in front of you, when my skin and body were young and my mind wasn't as sore as it is now, - has always been you.

And when my eyes tell you this, in the moment before they decided to break down the door, you simply smile again.

"Darling," you say. "Let's have a proper Christmas. No sadness. We're home."

You push my longer hair away from my face, and kiss my forehead in the midst of the awful carollers threatening our door.

It isn't half as bad as what we used to face, I think, with a dry smile. And I know we'll do it together.

And now you're here, it isn't terrible at all.


End file.
